Fight the Treatment Industrial Complex

AFSC-Arizona staff are amazing advocates for prisoners - and as such, are true blessings to our communities. Spend time on their site - lots of resources.

Retiring Arizona Prison Watch...

This site was originally started in July 2009 as an independent endeavor to monitor conditions in Arizona's criminal justice system, as well as offer some critical analysis of the prison industrial complex from a prison abolitionist/anarchist's perspective. It was begun in the aftermath of the death of Marcia Powell, a 48 year old AZ state prisoner who was left in an outdoor cage in the desert sun for over four hours while on a 10-minute suicide watch. That was at ASPC-Perryville, in Goodyear, AZ, in May 2009.

Marcia, a seriously mentally ill woman with a meth habit sentenced to the minimum mandatory 27 months in prison for prostitution was already deemed by society as disposable. She was therefore easily ignored by numerous prison officers as she pleaded for water and relief from the sun for four hours. She was ultimately found collapsed in her own feces, with second degree burns on her body, her organs failing, and her body exceeding the 108 degrees the thermometer would record. 16 officers and staff were disciplined for her death, but no one was ever prosecuted for her homicide. Her story is here.

Marcia's death and this blog compelled me to work for the next 5 1/2 years to document and challenge the prison industrial complex in AZ, most specifically as manifested in the Arizona Department of Corrections. I corresponded with over 1,000 prisoners in that time, as well as many of their loved ones, offering all what resources I could find for fighting the AZ DOC themselves - most regarding their health or matters of personal safety.

I also began to work with the survivors of prison violence, as I often heard from the loved ones of the dead, and learned their stories. During that time I memorialized the Ghosts of Jan Brewer - state prisoners under her regime who were lost to neglect, suicide or violence - across the city's sidewalks in large chalk murals. Some of that art is here.

In November 2014 I left Phoenix abruptly to care for my family. By early 2015 I was no longer keeping up this blog site, save occasional posts about a young prisoner in solitary confinement in Arpaio's jail, Jessie B.

I'm deeply grateful to the prisoners who educated, confided in, and encouraged me throughout the years I did this work. My life has been made all the more rich and meaningful by their engagement.

I've linked to some posts about advocating for state prisoner health and safety to the right, as well as other resources for families and friends. If you are in need of additional assistance fighting the prison industrial complex in Arizona - or if you care to offer some aid to the cause - please contact the Phoenix Anarchist Black Cross at PO Box 7241 / Tempe, AZ 85281. collective@phoenixabc.org

Monday, September 10, 2012

Parsons v Ryan: Suicide Prevention Day, 2012, AZ DOC.

Remembering the suicide victims of Jan Brewer

and Charles Ryan at the Arizona Department of Corrections.

"SOS from Arizona's Other Death Row"

Firehouse Gallery and Cafe, Phoenix

June 2012

This is the state of suicide prevention in Arizona's Department of Corrections, under Director Charles Ryan. I hope the DOC responds to this critique with a detailed description of what else they're doing to reduce the rate of despair and violence that's driving Arizona prisoners to kill themselves at twice the rate than the national average for state prisoners. I want to know what the training consists of. So do the families who have already suffered a death in custody - as well as the loved ones of those mentally ill prisoners fighting to be safe and well in custody now. How have the conditions described below changed since Parsons v Ryan was filed?

If you have a loved one in prison with a serious mental illness whose safety or sanity you fear deeply for, please feel free to contact me. I'm just an artist and activist - I'm not a lawyer or professional anything, but I can refer you to resources in your community, and connect you with other families who share your struggle.

Have your loved ones write me as well.

Arizona Prison Watch / PO Box 20494 / PHOENIX, AZ 85036

thank you again to all the attorneys working on this case...but most of all, to the prisoner-litigants who had the courage to put their names and faces to the abuses and neglect going on behind bars in this state...

82. Defendants have a policy and practice of housing prisoners with
serious mental health needs in unsafe conditions that heighten their
risk of suicide. In FY 2011, there were 13 suicides in ADC prisons, out
of a population that averaged 34,000 during that time. That is a rate of
38 suicides per 100,000 prisoners per year, more than double the
national average suicide rate in state prisons of 16.67 per 100,000.
Three prisoners committed suicide in one week in late January 2012,
including a 19-year-old woman.

83. One factor responsible for such a high suicide rate is
Defendants’ policy and practice of maintaining suicide watch facilities
that offer no meaningful treatment.
Usually the only people who
interact with prisoners on suicide watch are correctional officers who
check on them periodically, medication assistants who dispense pills, or
psychology assistants who talk to them through the front of their cell.
Plaintiff Swartz did not receive psychotherapy for more than two months
in the summer of 2011 while on suicide watch at the Lewis facility.
After he swallowed glass and was taken to an outside hospital, the
hospital psychiatrist recommended that he be taken to an inpatient
mental health unit. These units are in the Phoenix complex. Instead, Mr.
Swartz remained at Lewis where he continued to harm himself. He finally
was moved to the Phoenix inpatient unit almost three months after the
hospital psychiatrist had made that recommendation, but after a short
period of time he was again returned to Lewis. Plaintiff Thomas did not
see a psychiatrist for 11 months despite being placed on suicide watch
multiple times.

84. Defendants also have a policy and practice of holding suicidal
and mentally ill prisoners in conditions that violate all notions of
minimally adequate mental health care and basic human dignity, and are
not compatible with civilized standards of humanity and decency. Suicide
watch cells are often filthy, with walls and food slots smeared with
other prisoners’ blood and feces, reeking of human waste. Mental health
staff show a lackof professionalism and little compassion for prisoners
enduring these conditions: for example, prisoners in suicide cells are
taunted for being in “the feces cells.” When Plaintiff Swartz complained
to a LPN about the unhygienic conditions of the suicide cell at Lewis,
the LPN described him in the mental health notes from the encounter as
“bitching about cleanliness – germs and disease.”

85. Defendants have a policy and practice of keeping suicide watch
cells at very cold temperatures. Prisoners are stripped of all clothing
and given only a stiff suicide smock and a thin blanket, making the
extreme cold even harder to tolerate. Plaintiffs Rodriguez and Verduzco
report that the suicide smock used in Perryville barely comes to the top
of female prisoners’ thighs, so both their legs and arms are exposed to
cold air. Many prisoners are also deprived of mattresses and as a
result must sleep on bare steel bed frames, or on the floor made filthy
with the bodily fluids of prior inhabitants. Plaintiff Brislan spent
several weeks in a frigid suicide cell with no mattress.

86. Defendants have a policy and practice of exposing prisoners on
suicide watch to gratuitously harsh, degrading, and damaging conditions
of confinement. Prisoners are given only two cold meals a day, and are
denied the opportunity to go outside, brush their teeth, or take
showers. The only monitoring prisoners receive in suicide watch is when
correctional officers force them awake every ten to 30 minutes, around
the clock, ostensibly to check on their safety. In some suicide cells,
bright lights are left on 24 hours a day. The resulting inability to
sleep aggravates the prisoners’ psychological distress.

87. Mentally ill prisoners on suicide watch complain of correctional
staff behavior that interferes with any therapeutic effect of being on
suicide watch, including harassment, insults and taunts, and the
excessive and practically sporting use of pepper spray. Prisoners at the
Perryville suicide watch units, including Plaintiff Verduzco, have
jerked awake when awoken by staff on the “safety checks,” and are pepper
sprayed for allegedly attempting to assault the officers. Guards in the
Perryville suicide watch units also frequently pepper spray female
prisoners in their eyes and throats when they are delusional or
hallucinating. Plaintiffs Rodriguez and Verduzco have asthma and rely
upon inhalers, and they have had asthma attacks from the regular use of
pepper spray in the women’s suicide watch unit. On multiple occasions
after she was pepper sprayed in the eyes, nose, and mouth, Ms. Verduzco
was dragged to a shower, stripped naked, and sprayed with extremely cold
water to rinse away the pepper spray; she was then left naked to wait
for a new vest and blanket. A prisoner in the Florence prison’s suicide
watch unit reports that while there he was handed razor blades to
swallow by other prisoners, and told “just die right away.” He started
to swallow the blades, and security staff pepper sprayed him while he
coughed up blood, and did not provide other emergency response.

88. Defendants’ policy and practice of holding suicidal prisoners in
excessively harsh conditions does not prevent but rather promotes
self-injurious behavior. Plaintiff Brislan has cut himself numerous
times with razors and pieces of metal while on suicide watch at multiple
prisons, including Tucson, Lewis, and Eyman’s SMU 1 and Browning units.
At the Tucson prison, staff put him on suicide watch in a cell with
broken glass on the floor which he used to cut himself. During another
stay in suicide watch, Mr. Brislan was given a razor blade that he used
to deeply lacerate both of his thighs. While on suicide watch in the
Lewis prison during the summer of 2011, Plaintiff Swartz, on separate
occasions, swallowed multiple foreign objects, including two large
staples, plastic wrap, a piece of glass, a lead-head concrete nail, a
spork, two pens, sharpened paper clips, a metal spring, a steel bolt,
and two copper wires. As with Plaintiff Brislan, Mr. Swartz’s repeated
suicidal gestures and ability to access dangerous objects while on
suicide watch confirms that he was not being properly monitored and that
any mental health treatment he might have been receiving was
inadequate.

89. Defendants also have a policy and practice of improperly using
the suicide watch cells to punish prisoners for alleged disciplinary
infractions. An Eyman prisoner who went on a hunger strike to protest
prison policies, but did not display signs of mental illness or
distress, was put in a suicide watch cell for several weeks and was told
by a mental health provider, “If you weren’t on this hunger strike, you
wouldn’t have to live in the feces cell.”